The APC-Effect: Stratification in Open Access Publishing

Abstract

Current implementations of Open Access (OA) publishing frequently involve Article Publishing Charges (APCs). Increasing evidence emerges that APCs impede researchers with fewer resources in publishing their research OA. We analysed 1.5 million scientific articles from journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals to assess average APCs and their determinants for a comprehensive set of journal publications, across scientific disciplines, world regions and through time. Levels of APCs were strongly stratified by scientific fields and the institutions’ countries, corroborating previous findings on publishing cultures and the impact of mandates of research funders. After controlling for country and scientific field with a multilevel mixture model, however, we found small to moderate effects of levels of institutional resourcing on the level of APCs. This is what we call the APC-Effect. Effects were largest in countries with low GDP, suggesting decreasing marginal effects of institutional resources when general levels of funding are high. Our findings provide further evidence on how APCs stratify OA publishing and highlight the need for alternative publishing models.

Toward equitable open research: stakeholder co-created recommendations for research institutions, funders and researchers

“…Therefore, the literature suggests that well-resourced actors are better equipped to implement and better able to benefit from the implementation of Open Research practices. of a journal's APC tends to correlate with its prestige [32,33], and that OA publishing may give authors a citation advantage [34,35], the APC model appears to create inequity in the OA publishing space, with well-resourced researchers potentially at an advantage relative to those who are under-resourced [8,32,33,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. In particular, research has shown that women [45], scholars within the social sciences and humanities [46], those from middle-and lower-income nations [47,48] and early career researchers [49] experience disadvantage relative to others when it comes to OA publishing.…”

“…3 In a world in which all researchers were equally supported by equally resourced institutions and funding, this would be an even and equitable playing field. However, given that resource stratification of research institutions exists, that research funding is limited, that the size of a journal's APC tends to correlate with its prestige [ 32 , 33 ], and that OA publishing may give authors a citation advantage [ 34 , 35 ], the APC model appears to create inequity in the OA publishing space, with well-resourced researchers potentially at an advantage relative to those who are under-resourced [ 8 , 32 , 33 , 36 – 44 ]. In particular, research has shown that women [ 45 ], scholars within the social sciences and humanities [ 46 ], those from middle- and lower-income nations [ 47 , 48 ] and early career researchers [ 49 ] experience disadvantage relative to others when it comes to OA publishing.…”

A review of the sustainable development goals to make headways through theCOVID‐19 pandemic era

“…20 In addition, there is a clear Matthew effect (which states "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer") in terms of differential SDG accomplishment, with lower-income countries clearly making slower progress toward meeting the sustainable development goals agenda. 24 Therefore, uneven SDG progress perpetuates growth differences between and within countries.…”

“…Overall, in developing countries the changing climate and inadequate access basic needs pose significant challenges, while in developed countries, responsible demand, and consumption, coupled with ecosystem integrity, pose significant challenges 20 . In addition, there is a clear Matthew effect (which states “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer”) in terms of differential SDG accomplishment, with lower‐income countries clearly making slower progress toward meeting the sustainable development goals agenda 24 . Therefore, uneven SDG progress perpetuates growth differences between and within countries.…”

The potential of inclusive and collaborative Open Research processes at the science-policy interface

“…), has now demonstrated that inequalities manifest within OA publishing due to the 'APC-Effect' (Klebel and 2020;Boudry et al 2019;Siler et al 2018;Batterbury 2017;Gray 2020;Ellers, Crowther, and Harvey 2017;Tennant and Lomax 2019;Monge-Nájera and Monge-Nájera 2018). In addition, institutions with more resources are able to pay higher APCs for their authors (controlling for region and discipline), which not only allows for APC-OA publishing, but doing so in higher prestige, higher cost journals (Klebel and Ross-Hellauer 2022). If OA outputs are looked to as a source of information for evidencebased policy-making, then these findings suggest that the population of researchers who are able to wield influence at the science-policy interface will remain narrow, exclusive, and largely based on privilege.…”